Same old issues in main branch reported as new issues in another branch

[agomez (Adrian Gomez)]

Must-share information (formatted with Markdown):

• which versions are you using:
• SonarQube Enterprise Edition v9.9.5
• SonarScanner version: 4.8.1.3023
• how is SonarQube deployed: zip on a VM

I have a SonarQube Java project configured as follows:

• main branch: new code is based on previous version.
• other branches: Use “main” as the reference branch.

For this project, I executed an analysis of our “main” branch code to set the initial analysis of it. The analysis was reported properly on SonarQube, showing all the issues found:

Then, I run the same analysis from a different branch that was started from the “main” branch, but which did not include any changes on the source code.

I was expecting to see that a new branch with no new issues is reported in SonarQube. However, it reports as new issues exactly all the issues already found in the main branch:

I have reviewed the sonar-scanner logs and I did not find any errors. The Java sensor reports the following:

[TRACE]: INFO: Sensor JavaSensor [java]
[TRACE]: INFO: Configured Java source version (sonar.java.source): 8
[TRACE]: INFO: JavaClasspath initialization
[TRACE]: INFO: JavaClasspath initialization (done) | time=7ms
[TRACE]: INFO: JavaTestClasspath initialization
[TRACE]: INFO: JavaTestClasspath initialization (done) | time=1ms
[TRACE]: INFO: Server-side caching is enabled. The Java analyzer will not try to leverage data from a previous analysis.
[TRACE]: INFO: Using ECJ batch to parse 393 Main java source files with batch size 101 KB.
[TRACE]: INFO: Starting batch processing.
[TRACE]: INFO: The Java analyzer cannot skip unchanged files in this context. A full analysis is performed for all files.
[TRACE]: INFO: 100% analyzed
[TRACE]: INFO: Batch processing: Done.
[TRACE]: INFO: Did not optimize analysis for any files, performed a full analysis for all 393 files.
[TRACE]: INFO: Using ECJ batch to parse 1 Test java source files with batch size 101 KB.
[TRACE]: INFO: Starting batch processing.
[TRACE]: INFO: 100% analyzed
[TRACE]: INFO: Batch processing: Done.
[TRACE]: INFO: Did not optimize analysis for any files, performed a full analysis for all 1 files.
[TRACE]: WARN: Unresolved imports/types have been detected during analysis. Enable DEBUG mode to see them.
[TRACE]: WARN: Use of preview features have been detected during analysis. Enable DEBUG mode to see them.
[TRACE]: INFO: No "Generated" source files to scan.
[TRACE]: INFO: Sensor JavaSensor [java] (done) | time=73829ms

Also, I did not find any error or message related to this on the scanner executed with the debug option (-x).

I have tried several times to recreate the project, run the scanning providing and not providing the version for the main branch… I have also tried to run the scanner twice (one for the main branch, and another for another branch name) on the same git branch and with no re-compilation/re-testing in the middle (to use the exact same input data for the scanner)… With no success.

If I check any issue on the change branch, I see the following:

The second date matches the scan of the change-50791 branch, but the first date… I have no idea from where is that date fetched.

Any hint or ideas? Anything that I can check to see why those issues are not

[Sylvain_Combe]

Hi @agomez
Welcome to the Sonar Community!
As seen together, the reference New Code period is computed from the Git information.
If you configure the reference branch to be ‘main’ but no branch on that name is found in Git locally, then all commits are considered new.

[agomez (Adrian Gomez)]

Completely correct!

I was trying to analyse my source code (on branch “A”) assigning it to “main” branch on the sonar-scanner parameter, just because none of my source code was yet merged to the real “main” branch.

So when I tried to perform the same analysis from a different branch (e.g.: “B”), assigning it to “B” branch on the sonar scanner parameter, it was detecting all source code as new (because in “main” git branch there was no source code at all).

Thanks a lot for helping me to spot my issue, I assumed that sonar-scanner was not taking care of the branch information in my git repository.